Mornings are not my best time currently. Not nausea but they are often my peak time for feeling rubbish about everything. The night before last I had a nightmare that I’d been pregnant with twins but at least one had died. I woke up into my ‘new normal’ misery and hyper awareness of death and loss and mortality. My sense of death was so strong. I didn’t feel pregnant any more. All my symptoms went quiet and my head blew up. After a few hours I was able to gather my courage and go for the blood test I’d been booked in to. This was to test the HCG levels and see how the pregnancy is progressing. The wait for the results was miserable. I am crazy emotional. I cry about everything. Happy tears. Stressed tears. Everything.

My people are looking out for me. I feel so vulnerable! I’m such a fighter usually, it doesn’t feel like me. But I’m not alone, people are holding my hand. 10pm last night and my lovely GP emailed the results and they are fantastic. HCG level significantly increased – a strong result, an excellent suggestion that everything is progressing well with our little froggie. The relief was like a warm shower after spending a day in the cold rain. So much for intuition. All that guff about trusting your feelings… well sometimes you have to tell your feelings to bugger off.

My days tend to be pretty quiet at the moment, I potter around home trying to calm my anxiety, do some housework and admin. In the evenings there’s baseball and boardgames and DVD’s and hanging out with friends. I miss work and I miss study, but the childcare cert starts this week so I’m hoping it will help scratch that itch. Most mornings I drive Rose to work which is a bit painful if I’m short of sleep but such a nice way to start my day when I’m feeling horrible and that everyone else is out contributing to the world and being a useful citizen and I’m home contemplating another load of dishes and listening to the dogs fart.

I’m holding onto the things I do or have done that are useful or have been helpful to Rose and others. I hope that we’re not in for more tragedy and recovery. Rest is very hard for me, and I flounder when I don’t have a clear plan about my future. I miss everything, miss the hearing voices network, miss my colleagues, miss study, miss feeling that I’m finding some kind of place for myself in the art world, or that my business was growing and going to take me somewhere. Most of all, I miss feeling like myself. I so want to feel part of things again. Patience doesn’t come easily, but I will keep holding on.

But we’re pregnant! I’ve booked my first hospital appointment for mid January. Our 8 week scan falls Christmas week but considering how badly our last one went, we might push it off until the week after. Finding any kind of emotional stability is hard enough as it is! In the meantime, we’ve put up our Christmas tree, Rose is diligently collecting poppy seeds from our garden, and life with all the mad ups and downs, goes on.